This is an interesting and sad photograph of street cats being fed by someone in an Asian country, as far as I can tell by the style of the typography on the posters (or is it Israel as suggested by Michele S?). If someone can identify the country please leave a comment.
The reason why I have published it on PoC is because it is an unusual image. Also it reminds us that there are many street cats or community cats living tough lives in countries where the climate is more amenable to outdoor living.
These cats are really a sign of the failure of humans to manage the domestic cat situation better. We accept community cats (street cats) as part of the urban environment. But should we? Shouldn’t all cats be domestic cats cared for in homes? Isn’t that the target? Humans don’t seem to have a target. We just let things happen in a rather careless way.
The original “domestic cats” were like these so perhaps this sort of relationship with cats is acceptable but I don’t believe so because the standard of care that we can provide to community cats is poor. We can feed them and sometimes if the cat is lucky provide veterinary care but by-and-large their lives are miserable and I think we owe cats a better life because we agreed to the domestication of cats. As we agreed to cat domestication and we benefitted from it we also, by implication, agree in 2015 to provide a standard of care higher than that which is being provided to the cats in the picture.
I believe a greater focus should be placed on improving the standard of cat ownership on the planet. It is time that we stopped seeing pictures like this one. We are too accepting of it as a norm. Our standards are too low. When I use the word “our” I mean humankind generally. Clearly there are many communities in many countries where the standard cat caretaking is high. It is just that in general across the globe the standard is not high enough. Humankind is yet to value the domestic cat highly enough. The person who is feeding these cats should be praised but it is a symbol of failure in my opinion.
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I may be wrong, but I think the writing is Hebrew. Having visited Israel several times for holdiays, my experience was that in general, people were kind to animals.
The warmer climate in Mediterranean countries helps to prolong the natural breeding season slightly and as you say makes outdoor living more amenable. Like everywhere, if owners don’t neuter their pets and local organisations don’t have TNR programmes in place, stray cat numbers continue to grow.
Yes, Michele, now you mention I think you are correct. Israel is renown for their community cats. Thank you for that.